Tesla Bulls and Bears might want to look at Tesla as more than just a car company or risk missing out on a valuation trend.
Wedbush analyst Dan Ives looked at Tesla (ticker: TSLA) on a sum-of-the-parts, or SOTP, basis Friday. SOTP valuation tries to look at, and value, the separate businesses within a company to see if there is a big difference between business valuations and where the stock is currently trading.
Recently, Wall Street has gone through a similar exercise with General Electric (GE), 3M (MMM), and Alibaba (BABA). Those companies are either spinning out assets or have announced plans to shake things up.
Tesla isn't breaking apart, but things are happening. Tesla has signed deals with several automakers opening up its supercharging network to non-Tesla EVs. That forced investors, and the Street, to value the company's EV charging network.
Along with the charging business, Ives sees separate AI, battery, and energy businesses inside Tesla, along, of course, with its car business.
Tesla uses AI to train its self-driving features. Elon Musk hopes his self-driving software will get good enough to turn all existing Tesla vehicles into self-driving robotaxis with, essentially, the flip of a switch. Musk also hinted that Tesla could license its self-driving software to other automakers, at the second-quarter conference call
Tesla also sells battery storage products to consumers and utilities. That business grew more than 220% year over year in the second quarter of 2023. Tesla also makes some of its own batteries. There is good money in batteries. The world's largest battery maker Contemporary Amperex Technology Co Ltd (300750.China), which is better known as CATL, has a market capitalization of about 1 trillion Chinese Yuan, or about $137 billion.
"Musk & Co. have developed a diverse portfolio of products," wrote Ives. Tesla's battery production represents lower costs for the auto business, he says, adding Tesla's self-driving software products have logged more than 150 million miles of driving. AI is helping those systems get better faster. "Tesla's implementation of AI within its continuous rollout of new [self-driving] software updates provides an opportunity to expand its [addressable market] with full autonomy becoming an increasing focus."
It's a bullish outlook and SOTP valuations can come into and out of favor based on what's going on at a company. What's more, Tesla still makes, essentially, all of its money and free cash flow from selling cars.
Ives is a Tesla bull though, rating shares Buy. His price target is $350 a share, one of the highest on Wall Street. That worked out to about 73 times his 2024 earnings estimate of $4.80 a share.
Overall, 39% of analysts covering the company rate shares Buy. The average Buy-rating ratio for stocks in the S&P 500 is about 55%. The average analyst price target is about $254 a share. That price works out to about 53 times the consensus 2024 estimate of $4.78 a share.
Tesla stock is up 0.1% in premarket trading at $230.39 a share, while S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite futures are up 0.3% and 0.1%, respectively.
Coming into Friday trading, Tesla stock is off about 14% so far in August. A combination of price cuts by Tesla and its competitors in China as well as the market sell-off have weighed on investor sentiment.
